“To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.”
Proverbs 8:13
Hate is a strong word. It is used only sparingly in the Bible as it relates to God. There is a lot of emphasis on the love of God, but not a lot about his hate. When it does talk about what God hates, it is always about sin and evil. I think that many of us Christians take sin and evil too lightly. Do you hate the sin in your life? Do you hate the evil that you see in the world?
Before you say yes, let’s reflect about it. If we say that someone hates another person, what actions usually go along with that? It depends on how much they hate them, of course, but it may take many forms: actively avoiding them, speaking spitefully to them, sabotaging them, hurting them, or even killing them. That list clearly gets more and more severe, but all of these are things that people will do if they hate someone. Very rarely will a person’s actions not be affected if they really hate someone or something.
So think again, do you hate the sin in your life or the evil in the world? Do you actively work to avoid sin? Do you go out of your way to rid your life of its presence? Do you try to hurt it or weaken it? Do you hate it enough to kill it? Do you the sin in your life, that you know is against the will of God, enough to put it to death, to end its existence, to once and for all destroy it?
Well, the fact that we are all still sinners makes me think the answer is that maybe we just don’t hate sin enough. We enjoy the pleasures of sin more than we hate the toll it take on our relationship with God. We like the way sin makes us feel more than we hate the evil it brings to our lives or others’. We prefer the comfort of our sins more than we want to push ourselves out of our comfort zone to destroy it.
We must face the truth that sin is Satan’s attempt to remove us from the presence of God permanently and eternally. Sin is nothing to take lightly. Evil is nothing to be tolerated. There is no room for it in our lives. Hate sin. Hate evil. After all, it’s trying to kill you.
Prayer:
Father,
Help me to identify the sin in my life, to see how it contradicts your word and hurts my relationship with you and others, and rid my life of it. Help me to love you enough to hate everything that is against you. Forgive me when I fail, and help me never to give up.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
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